History Horrible / Literature

* '''''The Chalice of Origins''''' from Isabel Canet Ferrer, is a mediocre YA-esque novel about a girl with a face deformed after an accident [[InformedAttribute (Not that it comes up very often)]] who finds herself being the pivotal player in a battle played by various Italian paintings, and the sole wielder of the sacred weapon of the Chalice of Origins. [[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot The plot could've worked]] but it's mostly just an excuse for the writer to flex her artistic knowledge, and it doesn't fully take advantage of the setting. With continuity errors gallore, dialogue that switched between cringe and {{Narm}}, plot twists so obvious that you'd swear they were going for a RedHerring, poorly paced sequences (At one point, the protagonist is said to need to go to a certain painting, and we're treated to various pages explaining its importance and difficulty reaching. Next page, she already is there), a RomanticPlotTumor the size of a peach and a general sense of amateurishness, the book has been lambasted by Spanish readers and by critics and is considered at best an attempt to cash in on the Young Adult genre [[TwoDecadesBehind years after it had ended.]]

* '''''Touched by Venom''''' by Janine Cross, better known as ''The "Venom Cock" Book'', would have barely been a blip if not for the Internet. The closest one can get to a plot summary is to say that ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'', ''Literature/{{Gor}}'', and ''Literature/ClanOfTheCaveBear'' get thrown in a blender with extra helpings of pain, suffering, and sex with dragons. It takes FromBadToWorse to [[DeusAngstMachina ludicrous degrees]]: The Dragon Temple screws Zarq's serf enclave out of all their worldly possessions on a technicality? Sell Zarq's sister into [[AFateWorseThanDeath sex slavery]] to buy food and supplies. Mom schemes to get her back? The scheme backfires, resulting in Dad's execution and Mom and Zarq's banishment. (Also, Mom's pregnant, and they're kicked out immediately after she gives birth to a son she's not even allowed to hold.) They find refuge in a convent that houses old dragons? Just in time for Mom to drop dead! Then Zarq has to undergo [[{{Gorn}} "circumcision"]] to be considered "clean and holy". The nuns hold fertility rites with the old dragons. And that just takes you halfway through the book; after that, the damage spreads to people other than Zarq. To Cross' credit, she never tries to pretend that it's anything other than a CrapsackWorld, and the sequels (while not ''good'') are a significant improvement and explain many of the baffling plot points in ''Venom'', but the book doesn't stand on its own.

# To ensure that the work is judged with a clear mind and the hatred isn't just a knee-jerk reaction, as well as to allow opinions to properly form, '''[[Administrivia/NoRecentExamplesPlease examples should not be added until at least one month after release]]'''.

* '''''Franchise/{{Pokemon}} and Franchise/HarryPotter: A Fatal Attraction''''' by Phil Arms is the worst of the many books designed to warn frightened parents about [[NewMediaAreEvil hot new franchises]]. Despite the name, [[NeverTrustATitle most of the book]] is about ''Pokémon'', with ''Harry Potter'' only getting a single chapter. Arms clearly knew nothing about either franchise and [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch admits outright that he's never seen, read, or played anything from either one]], apparently getting most of his information from internet forums dedicated to criticizing them. He seems to think that you can kill, maim, and steal in a ''Pokémon'' game, and that ''Pokémon'' and ''Franchise/{{Digimon}}'' are the same thing (a clear indication of someone who doesn't know what he's talking about). Although the average Amazon [[http://www.amazon.com/Pokemon-Harry-Potter-Fatal-Attraction/product-reviews/1575580675/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop/192-5176829-5466719?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R230APTPXBBOZO review]] is sitting at a 4.1, most of the five-star reviews are obviously written by {{troll}}s.

* '''"[[https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/6pfmim/this_incredible_poem_by_ready_player_one_author/ Nerd Porn Auteur]]"''' by Creator/ErnestCline (known for ''Literature/ReadyPlayerOne'') is a supposed poetry book, but to call it poetry would be a crime against language, for not a single line scans in any way. Every single line has a different number of syllables from the ones before or after it, and no attention is paid to the natural rhythm of speech, so it definitely isn't free verse either. The only way it could be passed off as poetry is by having nonstandard line breaks. If that weren't bad enough, the entire poem is just a [[EntitledToHaveYou "Nice Guy"]] complaining about girls sleeping with jocks instead of people like him; despite claiming to dislike the objectification of women, he [[{{Hypocrite}} does so himself]] without any self-awareness. It's included in the poetry collection ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Importance-Being-Ernest-Cline-ebook/dp/B00NMXR16I/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 The Importance of Being Ernest]]'' ([[SimilarlyNamedWorks not to be confused]] with Creator/OscarWilde's [[Theatre/TheImportanceOfBeingEarnest classic play]]), all of which fails at being poetry, resembling blog posts with random line breaks about subjects ranging from ''Series/{{Airwolf}}'' to Nostradamus as your roommate to [[BreadEggsMilkSquick cunnilingus]] -- but "Nerd Porn Auteur" stands out as the worst. After some time, [[CreatorBacklash Cline himself eventually came to agree with the criticism]] and wrote a scathing SelfParody poem to show he no longer held these attitudes.

* Creator/GloriaTesch rose to infamy thanks to her [[VanityPublishing vanity-published]] series ''Literature/MaradoniaSaga''. The books themselves are styled as a "trilogy", but there are [[TrilogyCreep five of them]][[note]]A sixth book, ''Maradonia and the Battle for the Key'', was advertised but never published[[/note]]. The first two entries are 700-page {{Doorstopper}}s, while the third only has about 400 pages; she then [[DividedForPublication split up the first two books]], and thus we get five. All the books are riddled with awful formatting, [[DesignatedHero callous and self-absorbed protagonists]], and [[RandomEventsPlot a confusing story]] that plagiarizes from other far more credible works. Among the "exciting" plot elements are a talking grasshopper, an antagonist with a "Club of Evil" that sings "Mother Earth songs" and has a water park, and random use of the salsa dance. Tesch's father [[Creator/GerryTesch Gerry]] bankrolled her and backed her up with an army of lawyers and {{Sock Puppet}}s to promote the books (and silence their critics). Tesch was billed as "[[VeryFalseAdvertising the world's youngest novelist]]", even though people younger than her had published much better books before she did. Gerry even funded a [[Film/MaradoniaAndTheShadowEmpire film adaptation]], which [[Horrible/LiveActionFilmsGToM was also poorly received]] and appears to have bankrupted him. Impish Idea has a {{Spork}} of the entire series [[http://impishidea.com/tag/maradonia-%28series%29/ here]]. As of 2020, Tesch seems to have tried her best to [[BuryYourArt suppress the series]], effectively disowning ''Maradonia''.

* '''Creator/GloriaTesch''':
** Tesch rose to infamy thanks to her [[VanityPublishing vanity-published]] series ''Literature/MaradoniaSaga''. The books themselves are styled as a "trilogy", but there are [[TrilogyCreep five of them]][[note]]A sixth book, ''Maradonia and the Battle for the Key'', was advertised but never published[[/note]]. The first two entries are 700-page {{Doorstopper}}s, while the third only has about 400 pages; she then [[DividedForPublication split up the first two books]], and thus we get five. All the books are riddled with awful formatting, [[DesignatedHero callous and self-absorbed protagonists]], and [[RandomEventsPlot a confusing story]] that plagiarizes from other far more credible works. Among the "exciting" plot elements are a talking grasshopper, an antagonist with a "Club of Evil" that sings "Mother Earth songs" and has a water park, and random use of the salsa dance. Tesch's father [[Creator/GerryTesch Gerry]] bankrolled her and backed her up with an army of lawyers and {{Sock Puppet}}s to promote the books (and silence their critics). Tesch was billed as "[[VeryFalseAdvertising the world's youngest novelist]]", even though people younger than her had published much better books before she did. Gerry even funded a [[Film/MaradoniaAndTheShadowEmpire film adaptation]], which [[Horrible/LiveActionFilmsGToM was also poorly received]] and appears to have bankrupted him. Impish Idea has a {{Spork}} of the entire series [[http://impishidea.com/tag/maradonia-%28series%29/ here]]. As of 2020, Tesch seems to have tried her best to [[BuryYourArt suppress the series]], effectively disowning ''Maradonia''.

** ''Literature/TheSecretOfMoonLake'', written under the pseudonym Sofia Nova and promoted as her debut novel, is not much better. The guy who sporked ''Maradonia'' [[http://conjugalfelicity.com/the-secret-of-moon-lake/part-one-what-have-i-gotten-myself-back-in-to/ thinks it's awful]], and the Terrible Book Club [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOlcKNQhXr4 talks about it here]]. The book does have positive reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, but those are most likely AstroTurf.

** She goes on about how ''WesternAnimation/{{The Lion King|1994}}'' supposedly plagiarized from ''Anime/KimbaTheWhiteLion'' when she very clearly hasn't seen ''either'' work. She can't tell ''Kimba''[='=]s Pauley Cracker (a parrot) from ''The Lion King''[='=]s Zazu (a hornbill). She thinks they have the same "rocky terrain" as a setting, when ''Kimba'' mostly takes place in the jungle. She notes that both Claw and Scar are darker-skinned lions with a scar over their left eye -- and misses the massive differences in their characters' personalities, as well as the fact that Claw is a much less prominent character than Scar. She notes that "Kimba" and "Simba" are similar, and fails to pick up on how "Simba" is [[YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord Swahili for "lion"]].

* '''''Reaper's Creek''''' by Greg Jackson, better known as Onision, is his third foray into literature. While his first two books were bad, this is much, much worse. In it, a boy named Daniel is abducted by aliens and given powers -- first, he can just sense dead bodies, but he gets so many more NewPowersAsThePlotDemands that he becomes more powerful than God and [[RageAgainstTheHeavens fights him]]. Almost every challenge he faces is resolved instantly, and anything resembling real difficulty comes off as artificial. Daniel is a borderline SociopathicHero who goes against his own [[ThouShaltNotKill moral code]] in the blink of an eye, such as when he kills a SerialKiller and his accomplices (including the one who [[UnintentionallySympathetic was blackmailed into doing it]]). There's a graphic sex scene between Daniel and his girlfriend, when [[{{Squick}} he's 12 and the girlfriend is 16]]. There are various grammar and spelling errors, and perhaps the most telling is one where Daniel is accidentally referred to as "[[HerCodeNameWasMarySue Greg]]". It's so bad, [[WebVideo/TheBookWasBetter Krimson Rogue]] did a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiJfGq-iyp0 two]]-[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djTgW-1HHKg hour]] rant on it and dubbed it worse than his known BerserkButton, ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga''.

* ''Literature/TheLegendOfRahAndTheMuggles'', by '''Nancy Stouffer''', rose to infamy after Stouffer claimed that Creator/JKRowling took inspiration from her book for her ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' series. She filed a FrivolousLawsuit on this basis, which she lost comprehensively and which [[BileFascination drew interest in her works]] -- and a realization of how ''bad'' they were. A small-time publisher tried to [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity cash in]] on the scandal and did a small printing run, only to quickly go bankrupt. ''The Legend of Rah and the Muggles'' has so many blunders that a full list of them would at least double the size of this page, so [[http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html here are]] [[http://impishidea.com/tag/the-legend-of-rah-and-the-muggles/ a few]] [[http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/tag/fic%3A%20the%20legend%20of%20rah%20and%20the%20muggles handy plot breakdowns]] should you wish to subject yourself to them. Its main problem is that it can't seem to decide what it wants to be -- it's equal parts dark apocalyptic drama, [[SweetnessAversion sickeningly sweet fantasy]], children's GhostStory, and fable about where stars come from (which mostly gets tacked on at the end). ''Very'' briefly: The protagonists are twins who, as infants, are [[MosesInTheBulrushes sent away from a post-apocalyptic wasteland]] by their mother (who is [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome never brought up again]]) and end up in the land of the eponymous Muggles. One of the twins is AlwaysSecondBest and becomes the antagonist, while his brother Rah is the nominal hero but [[DesignatedHero doesn't care about his brother at all]]. The Muggles are [[UnintentionalUncannyValley grotesque, almost infantile creatures]] mutated by radiation. Their land is stuck in a nuclear winter -- until the twins bring the sun back. Somehow. They also have a "lemonade lake" and a character who keeps changing ages. The plot isn't about Rah redeeming his brother so much as trying to defeat him -- which is easy, because he does things like getting horrendously sick by [[IdiotBall keeping his hideout in a ridiculously irradiated tree]]. It reads as if nothing was planned out in advance, and everything ends up being ridiculous.

* '''''101 WACKY Computer Jokes''''' by J.B. and G.C. Stamper is one of the worst joke books ever made, and that's saying something. Every single "joke" is a cheap, nonsensical pun based loosely around some computing term -- for example, "What did the prisoner do when he got a computer? He ESCAPED!" (Get it? 'Cuz there's an [-ESCAPE-] key!) Its worst segment is the "Presidents of the Computed States of America", which is just the names of UsefulNotes/ThePresidentsOfTheUnitedStates turned into [[IncrediblyLamePun lame computer puns]] -- but not ''all'' the presidents, just five of them. And all of them have their own page, with just the pun, not even an illustration. Seanbaby tore into this book in the third part of [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-geek-humor-books-by-authors-who-understand-neither/ this Cracked article.]]

* ''Literature/TheLegendOfRahAndTheMuggles'', by '''Nancy Stouffer''', rose to infamy after its writer, Nancy Stouffer, claimed that Creator/JKRowling took inspiration from her book for her ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' series. She filed a FrivolousLawsuit on this basis, which she lost comprehensively and which [[BileFascination drew interest in her works]] -- and a realization of how ''bad'' they were. A small-time publisher tried to [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity cash in]] on the scandal and did a small printing run, only to quickly go bankrupt. ''The Legend of Rah and the Muggles'' has so many blunders that a full list of them would at least double the size of this page, so [[http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html here are]] [[http://impishidea.com/tag/the-legend-of-rah-and-the-muggles/ a few]] [[http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/tag/fic%3A%20the%20legend%20of%20rah%20and%20the%20muggles handy plot breakdowns]] should you wish to subject yourself to them. Its main problem is that it can't seem to decide what it wants to be -- it's equal parts dark apocalyptic drama, [[SweetnessAversion sickeningly sweet fantasy]], children's GhostStory, and fable about where stars come from (which mostly gets tacked on at the end). ''Very'' briefly: The protagonists are twins who, as infants, are [[MosesInTheBulrushes sent away from a post-apocalyptic wasteland]] by their mother (who is [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome never brought up again]]) and end up in the land of the eponymous Muggles. One of the twins is AlwaysSecondBest and becomes the antagonist, while his brother Rah is the nominal hero but [[DesignatedHero doesn't care about his brother at all]]. The Muggles are [[UnintentionalUncannyValley grotesque, almost infantile creatures]] mutated by radiation. Their land is stuck in a nuclear winter -- until the twins bring the sun back. Somehow. They also have a "lemonade lake" and a character who keeps changing ages. The plot isn't about Rah redeeming his brother so much as trying to defeat him -- which is easy, because he does things like getting horrendously sick by [[IdiotBall keeping his hideout in a ridiculously irradiated tree]]. It reads as if nothing was planned out in advance, and everything ends up being ridiculous.

* ''Literature/TheLegendOfRahAndTheMuggles'' by '''Nancy Stouffer''' who claimed to have inspired Creator/JKRowling's ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' series. She filed a FrivolousLawsuit on this basis, which she lost comprehensively and which [[BileFascination drew interest in her works]] -- and a realization of how ''bad'' they were. A small-time publisher tried to [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity cash in]] on the scandal and did a small printing run, only to quickly go bankrupt. ''The Legend of Rah and the Muggles'' has so many blunders that a full list of them would at least double the size of this page, so [[http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html here are]] [[http://impishidea.com/tag/the-legend-of-rah-and-the-muggles/ a few]] [[http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/tag/fic%3A%20the%20legend%20of%20rah%20and%20the%20muggles handy plot breakdowns]] should you wish to subject yourself to them. Its main problem is that it can't seem to decide what it wants to be -- it's equal parts dark apocalyptic drama, [[SweetnessAversion sickeningly sweet fantasy]], children's GhostStory, and fable about where stars come from (which mostly gets tacked on at the end). ''Very'' briefly: The protagonists are twins who, as infants, are [[MosesInTheBulrushes sent away from a post-apocalyptic wasteland]] by their mother (who is [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome never brought up again]]) and end up in the land of the eponymous Muggles. One of the twins is AlwaysSecondBest and becomes the antagonist, while his brother Rah is the nominal hero but [[DesignatedHero doesn't care about his brother at all]]. The Muggles are [[UnintentionalUncannyValley grotesque, almost infantile creatures]] mutated by radiation. Their land is stuck in a nuclear winter -- until the twins bring the sun back. Somehow. They also have a "lemonade lake" and a character who keeps changing ages. The plot isn't about Rah redeeming his brother so much as trying to defeat him -- which is easy, because he does things like getting horrendously sick by [[IdiotBall keeping his hideout in a ridiculously irradiated tree]]. It reads as if nothing was planned out in advance, and everything ends up being ridiculous.

* Creator/BobChipman's '''''Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick-by-Brick''''' touts itself as the definitive analysis of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' but fails in every way. Right from the start, it's bogged down by a badly-told history of the franchise that encompasses almost the first third of the book, random tangents that have nothing to do with anything, fringe far-left political opinions that even most leftists would disavow and are also [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment completely irrelevant to the topic]], stories from Chipman's personal life that might be interesting if not for Chipman coming across as highly immature and egotistical (with statements likening the reveal of ''[=SMB3=]'' in ''Film/TheWizard'' to the JFK assassination and the Nintendo/Sega UsefulNotes/ConsoleWars to Vietnam becoming [[MemeticMutation memetic]], and ''not'' in a positive way), spelling and grammar errors that betray a lack of copy-editing, and massive amounts of ego-stroking. As a piece of analysis, ''Brick by Brick'' fails as the portion describing ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' consists of dull steps-by-steps descriptions of every level in the game broken up by the occasional personal musing, with preciously little attempt to go beyond surface-level observations or describe what makes it tick as a game. There's a reason he [[CreatorBacklash has since disowned it]], along with all of his other books. The book has a 2.20 on Goodreads, with the top reviewer saying they'd rather stare at a vase or eat sand than read the book. You can listen to Terrible Book Club discuss the book [[https://terriblebookclub.com/episodes/episode-52-super-mario-bros-3-brick-by-brick-by-s1!31843 here]]. [=ProcrastiTara=] also reviews the book [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvEyVBEQh84&t=1672s here]], where she dubs it ''worse'' than Onision's books.

* '''Nancy Stouffer''' is a writer who gained infamy in 1999 for claiming that her 1984 books ''Literature/TheLegendOfRahAndTheMuggles'' and ''Larry Potter and his Best Friend Lilly'' inspired Creator/JKRowling's ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' series. Aside from some similarities in the names, the only things she could point to were flimsy comparisons like both books containing "characters in tights" or "wooden doors"--concepts which would be [[Administrivia/PeopleSitOnChairs laughed off the Trope Launch Pad]], never mind the US Patent and Trademark Office or the UK's Intellectual Property Office. She filed a FrivolousLawsuit on this basis, which she lost comprehensively and which [[BileFascination drew interest in her works]] -- and a realization of how ''bad'' they were. A small-time publisher tried to [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity cash in]] on the scandal and did a small printing run, only to quickly go bankrupt.
** ''The Legend of Rah and the Muggles'' has so many blunders that a full list of them would at least double the size of this page, so [[http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html here are]] [[http://impishidea.com/tag/the-legend-of-rah-and-the-muggles/ a few]] [[http://zelda-queen.livejournal.com/tag/fic%3A%20the%20legend%20of%20rah%20and%20the%20muggles handy plot breakdowns]] should you wish to subject yourself to them. Its main problem is that it can't seem to decide what it wants to be -- it's equal parts dark apocalyptic drama, [[SweetnessAversion sickeningly sweet fantasy]], children's GhostStory, and fable about where stars come from (which mostly gets tacked on at the end). ''Very'' briefly: The protagonists are twins who, as infants, are [[MosesInTheBulrushes sent away from a post-apocalyptic wasteland]] by their mother (who is [[ChuckCunninghamSyndrome never brought up again]]) and end up in the land of the eponymous Muggles. One of the twins is AlwaysSecondBest and becomes the antagonist, while his brother Rah is the nominal hero but [[DesignatedHero doesn't care about his brother at all]]. The Muggles are [[UnintentionalUncannyValley grotesque, almost infantile creatures]] mutated by radiation. Their land is stuck in a nuclear winter -- until the twins bring the sun back. Somehow. They also have a "lemonade lake" and a character who keeps changing ages. The plot isn't about Rah redeeming his brother so much as trying to defeat him -- which is easy, because he does things like getting horrendously sick by [[IdiotBall keeping his hideout in a ridiculously irradiated tree]]. It reads as if nothing was planned out in advance, and everything ends up being ridiculous.
** ''Larry Potter and His Best Friend Lilly'' has no real story other than "Larry Potter has a lot of friends", which is well below the standards of children's literature. The illustrations are even worse than Stouffer's other book, with the two protagonists [[{{Gonk}} looking nothing like human beings at all]]. The covers are also notable for being blatantly ripped off from the cover format of the original Bloomsbury editions of ''Harry Potter'', though needless to say she claimed the plagiarism was in the other direction.

* The ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' franchise has seen many books released over its long run, and while many of them vary in quality from great to mediocre, the one novel both [[FanonDiscontinuity fans]] and [[WriterRevolt 343 Industries]] would like to forget about is '''''Literature/HaloGlasslands''''' by Creator/KarenTraviss. Already infamous for her tendency to [[AuthorTract use her books as platforms to]] [[AuthorFilibuster voice her own opinions on the]] [[WriterOnBoard franchises she writes for]], this book can be best described as an officially published RevengeFic directed at [[AntiHero Dr. Halsey.]] The plot is constantly screeched to a halt as the characters angst over how terrible Halsey and the SPARTAN-II program are, with some of them being massive {{Hypocrite}}s in the process (the SPARTAN-III program, which involved turning children orphaned by the Human-Covenant war into glorified CannonFodder, evidently being perfectly ethical.) What time that isn't spent ranting about Halsey is instead spent on the protagonists [[DesignatedHero trying to incite civil war among the Sangheili faction most determined to maintain peaceful relations with mankind,]] making for a book rancid with MoralMyopia. Traviss's next two books for the series were somewhat better, but not enough to redeem her or her first entry in the eyes of the fandom.

* Creator/BobChipman's '''''Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick-by-Brick''''' touts itself as the definitive analysis of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' but fails in every way. Right from the start, it's bogged down by a badly-told history of the franchise that encompasses almost the first third of the book, random tangents that have nothing to do with anything, fringe far-left political opinions that even most leftists would disavow and are also [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment completely irrelevant to the topic]], stories from Chipman's personal life that might be interesting if not for Chipman coming across as highly immature and egotistical (with statements likening the reveal of ''[=SMB3=]'' to the JFK assassination and the Nintendo/Sega UsefulNotes/ConsoleWars to Vietnam becoming [[MemeticMutation memetic]], and ''not'' in a positive way), spelling and grammar errors that betray a lack of copy-editing, and massive amounts of ego-stroking. As a piece of analysis, ''Brick by Brick'' fails as the portion describing ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' consists of dull steps-by-steps descriptions of every level in the game broken up by the occasional personal musing, with preciously little attempt to go beyond surface-level observations or describe what makes it tick as a game. There's a reason he [[CreatorBacklash has since disowned it]], along with all of his other books. The book has a 2.20 on Goodreads, with the top reviewer saying they'd rather stare at a vase or eat sand than read the book. You can listen to Terrible Book Club discuss the book [[https://terriblebookclub.com/episodes/episode-52-super-mario-bros-3-brick-by-brick-by-s1!31843 here]]. [=ProcrastiTara=] also reviews the book [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvEyVBEQh84&t=1672s here]], where she dubs it ''worse'' than Onision's books.

* '''''Touched by Venom''''' by Janine Cross, better known as ''The "Venom Cock" Book'', would have barely been a blip if not for the Internet. The closest one can get to a plot summary is to say that ''Literature/DragonridersOfPern'', ''Literature/{{Gor}}'', and ''Literature/ClanOfTheCaveBear'' get thrown in a blender with extra helpings of pain, suffering, and sex with dragons. It takes FromBadToWorse to [[DeusAngstMachina ludicrous degrees]]: The Dragon Temple screws Zarq's serf enclave out of all their worldly possessions on a technicality? Sell Zarq's sister into [[AFateWorseThanDeath sex slavery]] to buy food and supplies. Mom schemes to get her back? The scheme backfires, resulting in Dad's execution and Mom and Zarq's banishment. (And Mom's pregnant, and they're kicked out immediately after she gives birth to a son she's not even allowed to hold.) Do they find refuge in a convent that houses old dragons? Just in time for Mom to drop dead! Then Zarq has to undergo [[{{Gorn}} "circumcision"]] to be considered "clean and holy". The nuns hold fertility rites with the old dragons. And that just takes you halfway through the book; after that, the damage spreads to people other than Zarq. To Cross' credit, she never tries to pretend that it's anything other than a CrapsackWorld, and the sequels (while not ''good'') are a significant improvement and explain many of the baffling plot points in ''Venom'', but the book doesn't stand on its own.

* Creator/BobChipman's '''''Super Mario Bros. 3: Brick-by-Brick''''' touts itself as the definitive analysis of ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' but fails in every way. Right from the start, it's bogged down by a badly-told history of the franchise that encompasses almost the first third of the book, random tangents that have nothing to do with anything, fringe far-left political opinions that even most leftists would disavow and are also [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment completely irrelevant to the topic]], stories from Chipman's personal life that might be interesting if not for Chipman coming across as highly immature and egotistical (with statements likening the reveal of ''[=SMB3=]'' to the JFK assassination and the Nintendo/Sega UsefulNotes/ConsoleWars to Vietnam becoming [[MemeticMutation memetic]], and ''not'' in a positive way), spelling and grammar errors that betray a lack of copy-editing, and massive amounts of ego-stroking. As a piece of analysis, ''Brick by Brick'' fails as the portion describing ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' consists of dull steps-by-steps descriptions of every level in the game broken up by the occasional personal musing, with preciously little attempt to go beyond surface-level observations or describe what makes it tick as a game. There's a reason he [[CreatorBacklash has disowned it]], along with all of his other books. The book has a 2.20 on Goodreads, with the top reviewer saying they'd rather stare at a vase or eat sand than read the book. You can listen to Terrible Book Club discuss the book [[https://terriblebookclub.com/episodes/episode-52-super-mario-bros-3-brick-by-brick-by-s1!31843 here]]. [=ProcrastiTara=] also reviews the book [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvEyVBEQh84&t=1672s here]], where she dubs it ''worse'' than Onision's books.

* '''''Literature/ListOfTheLost''''' is Music/{{Morrissey}}'s first foray into literary fiction and, self-evidently, should be his last. So unsalvageable, one critic compared hiring an editor for it to hiring "a doctor to help a corpse that had fallen from the top of the [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity Empire State Building]]." The story is of four high school track stars' fortunes turning sour after they kill and dump a homeless man. But the book is really about [[WriterOnBoard every single one of Morrisey's pet peeves]], including UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill, UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily, the court system, the meat industry, and [[HeManWomanHater women in general]]. All else is anciliary; the plot follows no order and serves no purpose but to slot in {{Author Tract}}s, and there's no sense or characterization or even character voice. The story proper barely makes up a fraction of the 118 pages, compared to the in-character tirades. And despite its length, it's an excruciatingly dull and slow read, thanks to the at times nigh-unparseable PurpleProse. It begs suspension of disbelief that one of the most important names in AlternativeRock history had ever picked up a pen before in his life. Seamas O'Reilly does a more thorough dissection of it than we're capable of [[https://www.balls.ie/the-rewind/morrissey-novel-390800?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=article&utm_medium=web here]].